Moves to change Selective Service rules in the US prompt outpouring of opposition to reintroduction of the draft

Andre Damon

Last week, the House of Representatives voted to make enrollment in the US Selective Service database automatic, prompting a flood of worried statements by young people and parents on social media about the reimposition of the draft.

While all American men are required by law to sign up for the Selective Service, the bill passed by the House would make the process automatic. It would still need to pass the Senate to become law.

US Marine recruits on Parris Island, S.C.[Credit: US Navy]

The move comes against the backdrop of the war between Russia and NATO in Ukraine, the largest war in Europe since World War II, statements by US officials that American troops will be deployed to Ukraine, and US allies expanding or reintroducing the draft.

In this context, the bill, while publicly framed as a mere bookkeeping measure, was seen by significant sections of the population as preparatory toward an introduction of the draft.

In posts on TikTok and Instagram, young people and parents expressed their fears of being drafted into the military and their opposition to war.

“Y’all ain’t taking me,” said one woman in a video on TikTok that was liked over 26,000 times.

They’ve been able to get away with a whole lot of stuff. There hasn’t been a whole lot of uprising. But we are not going to let our young men fight a war that we don’t agree with and that we don’t want.

In a 2023 video that went viral last week following the House vote announcement, one young TikTok user asked, “What has my country ever done for me besides make it impossible to buy a house and give me any sort of student loan relief or affordable healthcare?”

The outpouring of concern, opposition and ridicule prompted local news coverage. In an article entitled “How do Metro Detroiters feel about the possible Selective Service mandate?,” local news station WXYZ encountered near-universal concern and opposition to the move.

When asked, “Are you scared?” about a potential reintroduction of the draft, Southfield resident Brandon Richards replied:

Very, very. Especially with everything going on in the world right now and the stuff that’s happening. I don’t think it’s fair that my son would have to go and fight for his country.

The response from the US national media, however, was to dismiss public concern over the expansion of the draft as the result of “misinformation.”

An article in Rolling Stone was headlined, “Gen Z Fears a Military Draft Because of TikTok Misinformation.” It stated:

TikTok is awash in warnings that young men in the US could soon be drafted into military service and panicked reactions to that prospect—but all of it is predicated on a misinterpretation of a bill currently making its way through Congress.

No, young people do not fear and oppose a military draft because of “misinformation.” They fear and oppose a military draft because they have eyes to see and ears to hear.

The war in Ukraine between Russia and NATO has already led to the deaths of over half a million people. Videos have circulated widely of Ukrainian conscription officers prowling the streets of Kiev and other cities and pulling young people off of public transit and out of workplaces.

Against the backdrop of this escalating war, US President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address was a warmongering rant, in which the president declared, “In January 1941, Franklin Roosevelt came to this chamber to speak to the nation. ... War was raging in Europe.” Biden made a parallel to the present, declaring, “My purpose tonight is to wake up the Congress and alert the American people.”

Last month, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Charles Q. Brown told the New York Times that the NATO military alliance will “eventually” send significant numbers of active-duty NATO troops to Ukraine, which the newspaper said meant the deployment was “inevitable.”

French President Emmanuel Macron, meanwhile, has announced that he is working to form a “coalition” of countries to send troops to Ukraine.

Commenting on an article by the Times reporting the changes to the Selective Service, WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North said on X:

This @nytimes article on reinstating the draft is an example of the way public opinion is prepared for major changes in military policy. By the time it is reported that a policy is being debated, one can reasonably assume that it is well on its way to being implemented.

This year, Latvia, a NATO member, reintroduced conscription, forcing all young people between the ages of 18 and 27 to enter the armed services for 11 months.

Meanwhile, Denmark, another NATO member, has announced that it will expand the draft to include women starting in 2026.

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has pledged to reintroduce conscription if he wins the July 4 national election. Under his plan, at least 30,000 18-year-olds would be drafted into the military each year. He declared the move would “create a shared sense of purpose among our young people and a renewed sense of pride in our country.”

Last month, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said, “I’m convinced that Germany needs some kind of military conscription.” He stated that the country’s decision to end the draft was a “mistake,” adding, “times have changed.”

The German military said the same month that it is actively considering the return of conscription. “The ministry is currently clarifying whether general compulsory service or military service makes sense,” it stated.

In March, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk stated:

[W]ar is no longer a concept from the past. It is real, and it started over two years ago. The most worrying thing at the moment is that literally any scenario is possible. ... I know it sounds devastating, especially for the younger generation, but we have to get used to the fact that a new era has begun: the pre-war era.

US budget office revises upwards growth of debt

Nick Beams

The US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) this week issued an update to its forecast of the growth of public debt issued in February, which showed that the level of debt, already characterised by the Treasury and others as “unsustainable,” is rising faster than it had forecast just four months ago.

Phillip Swagel, Director of the Congressional Budget Office, testifies during a House Committee hearing on the Congressional Budget Office's budget and economic Outlook, Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2024, on Capitol Hill, in Washington. [AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib]

According to the latest report, the national debt will rise from its present level, rapidly approaching $35 trillion, to $56 trillion over the next decade.

The CBO also revised upwards the estimate of the budget deficit for 2024 from $1.6 trillion to $1.9 trillion—an increase of more than 20 percent.

As a proportion of GDP, the debt will rise from almost 100 percent in 2024 to 122 percent in a decade’s time, meaning that the debt is growing at a much faster rate than real economic output. Interest rate costs to service the debt, now approaching $1 trillion, will rise to $1.7 trillion by 2034.

Commenting on the latest data to the New York Times, Michael Peterson of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a think tank which has been a long-time advocate of spending cuts, noted one of the immediate causes for the escalation.

“The harmful effects of higher interest rates fueling higher interest costs on a huge existing debt load are continuing, and leading to additional borrowing. It’s the definition of unsustainable,” he said.

In response to the initial report in February, CBO director Phillip Swagel told the Financial Times that US government debt was on an “unprecedented” trajectory and could lead to the type of crisis which engulfed the UK financial system in September-October 2022, when the short-lived Tory government of Liz Truss proposed major tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations to be financed by debt.

He said the US was “not there yet,” but bond markets could “snap back” as they had in Britain. That possibility has only increased in the three months since the interview.

The issue of the growing deficit will be the subject of a series of conflicts in Congress in the lead-up to the presidential election as the Democrats and Republicans seek to blame each other for the worsening situation while agreeing on the essential issue—that the working class should be made to pay.

The central plank of the Republican platform is that the tax cuts under the Trump administration in 2017, which massively benefited corporations and the wealthy, should be extended beyond their scheduled expiry date of 2025.

Their key argument—based on the so-called Laffer curve, reputedly first elaborated on the back of a restaurant napkin by Arthur Laffer in 1974 with then White House chief of staff Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Dick Cheney—is that tax cuts would generate economic growth and so pay for themselves as government revenue increased.

That theory was discredited during the Reagan administration, when tax cuts produced increased deficits, and in the recent period.

In 2018 the CBO estimated that the tax cuts would generate enough revenue via economic growth to cover just 20 percent of the costs. But last month CBO director Swagel said economic studies had shown their effect was even less.

Biden has already said he will extend some of the tax cuts, while Trump has said he will fully extend them with the cost to government revenue estimated to be $5 trillion over the next ten years.

While there may be differences over tax cuts, largely at the margin, there is basic agreement on the need to attack retirement benefits and health care.

The position of the entire political establishment was set out by the Times, which functions very much as a mouthpiece for the Democrats, in its article on the CBO’s revised estimate.

It said the mounting costs of Social Security and Medicare “continue to weigh heavily on the nation’s finances, along with rising interest rates, which have made it more costly for the federal government to borrow huge sums of money.”

And further on, just to make sure the point was not lost, it said the “fights over tax and spending will be taking place at a time when the country’s fiscal backdrop is increasingly grim. An aging population continues to weigh on America’s old-age and retirement programs, which are facing long-term shortfalls that could result in reduced retirement and medical benefits.”

Significantly, reflecting bipartisan agreement, there was not a word in the article about one of the main reasons for the escalation of the deficit—the raising of US military spending to record highs.

Such is the toxic state of what passes for official politics, the issue of the deficit will no doubt be clouded by claims that immigrants, including those who are undocumented and dubbed “illegal,” are somehow dragging down the US government finances.

The CBO assessment gave the lie to that poisonous assertion, pointing out that new immigrants are expected to pay almost $1 trillion in taxes more than they consume in federal government benefits.

The issue of the US deficit is by no means a domestic concern. It has major international ramifications because as it pursues its drive for global hegemony through war, the US dollar, the basis of the global financial system, is the national currency of what is essentially a bankrupt imperialist state.

Faced with what amounts to an existential crisis, the US state will seek to resolve it by a war on two fronts: against the working class at home and through the intensification of an already well-advanced global war – in the Middle East, against Russia and against what it considers to be its chief rival, China.

On the financial front, the rapid escalation of US debt has already led to alarm bells being sounded.

In its Fiscal Monitor Report issued in April, the International Monetary Fund said the massive US deficits had stoked inflation and posed “significant risks” for the global economy.

In his presentation of the IMF’s World Economic Outlook report, its chief economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas said that, as well as short-term risks for the disinflation process, the deficit raised “longer-term fiscal and financial stability risks for the global economy” and that “something will have to give.”

Back in February when the CBO issued its assessment of the budgetary position of the US, FT writer Chris Giles noted that across Europe and in the US, governments were running their budgets in a “fantasy world,” as if in a fairy tale where something magical turns up and everyone lives happily ever after.

He pointed out that prospective US borrowing was about “50 percent higher than that proposed by former British chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng in his 2022 ‘mini’ budget which blew up the UK bond market.”

The CBO figures were worrying enough if taken at face value, but they could not because it had been “persistently too optimistic in recent years,” basing its projections on existing US policy, including the implausible assumption that the Trump tax cuts would expire at the end of 2025.

“But perhaps the biggest fantasy of all,” he concluded, “is the expectation that anything will happen to resolve unsustainable budgets without a crisis. We are much more likely to continue muddling along, pretending things are just about OK until something cracks. The trouble is that the fiscal system will break and there will be no happy ending.”

Growing COVID-19 hospitalisations in New Zealand

Tom Peters

A sixth wave of COVID-19, accompanied by other illnesses, including influenza and RSV, is placing immense pressure on New Zealand’s run-down public health system. Last Sunday, there were 279 people in hospital with COVID-19, which is about double the numbers recorded during March and April. 

Last week, 37 recent deaths were confirmed to be COVID-related, including one person aged in their twenties, bringing New Zealand’s total official COVID death toll since the pandemic began to 4,120. This is certainly an underestimate. 

New Zealand Minister of Health Shane Reti [Photo: Facebook/Shane Reti]

The Ministry of Health says another 1,907 people have died within 28 days of testing positive for COVID, but has claimed that these deaths were “not related” to the coronavirus. In the case of another 245 deaths, it is not confirmed whether COVID played a role.

Of the 4,788 cases reported last week, about two-thirds were repeat infections. This increases the likelihood of developing Long COVID, which can severely impact the brain, lungs, heart and other organs. The real case numbers are undoubtedly far higher; testing and reporting are no longer officially encouraged.

The pandemic, which has killed more than 27 million people worldwide, continues to exact a devastating toll because of deliberate policies adopted by capitalist governments that have placed corporate profit interests ahead of lives. 

New Zealand’s former Labour Party-led government of Jacinda Ardern ended its COVID elimination policy in October 2021 and removed all public health measures over the next year, ensuring the mass infection of the population. As well as causing thousands of deaths, this criminal policy has led to 40,816 hospitalisations for COVID-19.

The current surge is being fueled by new variants, particularly those known as KP.2 and KP.3, which are even more infectious than the JN.1 variant that was responsible for the previous wave earlier this year. Scientists have repeatedly warned that allowing the coronavirus to circulate would produce more immune-resistant strains, but these warnings have been ignored by governments.

In an attempt to cope with the influx of COVID patients, Wellington Regional Hospital recently reopened its dedicated COVID-19 ward from May 31 to June 11. It had been closed three years earlier. On June 14, Nelson Hospital reported that seven patients were being forced to wait in the emergency department, due to a surge in occupancy and a lack of beds.

Healthcare workers in Dunedin told the Otago Daily Times on June 11 that the overcrowding in the city’s emergency department meant that patients were being forced to wait in ambulances, potentially putting them at risk.

Public health experts continue to issue warnings calling on the public to wear masks and to remain at home and test if sick. Epidemiologist Michael Baker told Newshub on Tuesday: “The last three waves have been getting bigger, more cases, and… we’re quite complacent about this virus now, but we shouldn’t be.” He warned that COVID was the country’s most deadly infectious disease and “people of all ages are getting long-term effects—Long COVID.”

The government, however, has stopped virtually all public health messaging. There is no longer any requirement for people who test positive for COVID to self-isolate. At the end of June, rapid antigen tests will no longer be available for free anywhere. In another cost-cutting measure, the National Party-led government has scrapped free general practice consultations for people who are eligible to receive antiviral medication for COVID (the elderly and immunocompromised).

Despite the political establishment’s efforts to persuade the population to ignore COVID, it continues to cause major disruption to everyday life. Stuff reported on June 6: “Figures from the Ministry of Education showed estimated total teacher sick leave days nationwide increased to 401,832 in 2023, from 299,734 in 2018.” There have been several reports of school closures or partial closures due to staff illness since winter began.

The crisis in the health system is compounded by a shortage of thousands of nurses and doctors and intensified austerity measures. According to Council of Trade Unions economist Craig Renney, in the 2024/2025 budget announced last month, “Per capita operational expenditure on health fell by 1.3%, and real per capita expenditure (i.e., adjusted for inflation) fell by 4.5% on current population projections.”

Healthcare and other services are being starved while the government cuts taxes for the rich and diverts billions of dollars to expand the prison system, the police, and the military in preparation for war.

Healthcare workers have repeatedly taken strike action in an attempt to fight back. But these strikes are being kept isolated by the trade union bureaucracy, which is preventing any real fight against the healthcare crisis and government austerity. 

This includes the education unions, which enforced the full reopening of schools and workplaces in 2022 and the removal of masking and other measures to reduce the spread of COVID. The pandemic provided further proof that the unions are not workers’ organisations, but adjuncts of big business and the state, whose job is to protect corporate profits.

The public health measures taken in New Zealand, China and Australia early in the pandemic—when governments feared that letting the coronavirus spread would spark an uncontrollable rebellion in the working class—demonstrated that COVID-19 can be eliminated from the community. If implemented on a global scale, scientific policies—including quarantine, mass masking, social distancing and, where necessary, lockdowns—could have saved millions of lives.

Mass protests against Kenyan President Ruto’s IMF-dictated Finance Bill

Kipchumba Ochieng

Mass protests erupted yesterday against President William Ruto’s draconian Finance Bill 2024, introduced at the behest of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Bill proposes a new round of tax hikes and levies that will increase the price of basic goods.

In Nairobi, the capital, protests took place for a third day in a row, with demonstrators chanting “Ruto must go”. Anti-riot police fired tear gas and used water cannon to disperse tens of thousands, many young and protesting for the first time, gathering peacefully near the National Assembly. Live bullets have reportedly been used.

Demonstrators run from police during a protest over proposed tax hikes in a finance bill that is due to be tabled in parliament in Nairobi, Kenya, Thursday, June 20, 2024. [AP Photo/Andrew Kasuku]

Demonstrators were attempting to access parliament and were mobilised through social media like Instagram, Tik Tok and X/Twitter under the hashtags #OccupyParliament and #RejectFinanceBill2024.

Cutting across the tribal divides that the Kenyan ruling class systematically cultivates, tens of thousands demonstrated across the whole country. This includes Kisumu, the third largest city and an opposition stronghold; Nanyuki, where the largest British military base in East Africa is located; and Mombasa, home to the main port in East Africa. In Eldoret, a key stronghold of Ruto, hundreds of young people took to the streets and destroyed Ruto’s United Democratic Alliance party wheelbarrow symbols.

Protests also took place in Lodwar, Kakamega, Kisii, Nakuru, Edloret, Nyeri, Meru, and Kilifi.

The Finance Bill is a brutal attack on the working class and rural masses, already suffering a soaring cost of living worsened since the COVID-19 pandemic and NATO’s war on Russia in Ukraine. It is being forcefully imposed by a ruling elite serving as stooges of the IMF. In April 2021, Kenya entered into a $3.6 billion deal with the IMF in exchange for savage austerity.

According to a recent survey conducted by Infotrak, 87 percent of Kenyans are opposed to Ruto’s Bill. It includes hiking the road maintenance levy, which will lead to an increase in the cost of fuel and of transport, and the increase of Import Declaration Fee from 2.5 to 3.5 percent which will lead to higher prices of imported goods. The Ruto government is hoping to raise $2.7 billion, the largest amount of additional revenue extracted from the working class and rural masses in the history of Kenya’s Finance Bills.

Mass anger has forced the government to withdraw some of the most unpopular measures, including the 16 percent Value Added Tax on bread, introduction of a 2.5 percent motor vehicle tax, 25 percent excise duty on cooking oil, an eco-levy on products deemed harmful to the environment—including diapers, batteries, rubber tires, television sets and smartphones—and an excise duty on locally assembled motorbikes in a country with three million boda-boda (motorbike taxi) riders.

Ruto has made clear that despite this temporary setback he will continue to impose more tax hikes and levies. By the end of his term in 2027, he is committed to increasing taxes from the current 15 percent to at least 20 percent of GDP. Alternatives being discussed include further privatisations, cuts in healthcare and education expenditure and printing money to stoke inflation.

Yesterday, the Finance Bill passed the second reading in the National Assembly, by 204 votes to 115. The bill will now move to the committee stage and a third reading, before being sent to Ruto for assent.

Ruto accumulated most of his wealth from state sanctioned corruption, starting his political career over three decades ago as a thug employed by Western-backed dictator Daniel arap Moi to terrorise opposition. He won the August 2022 elections promising “bottom-up” economics and to defend the “hustlers”, the poor majority, against the “dynasties”, the wealthy and politically influential minority that have ruled since independence six decades ago.

Since he was elected president, Ruto’s government has imposed attacks including doubling VAT on fuels from 8 to 16 percent; raising taxes on food, mobile money transfers, digital content creation and salaries; increasing social security and health insurance contributions; and cutting public sector employment, as well as taking a levy from workers in formal employment to fund “affordable” housing—a new corruption scheme.

Ruto has defended these measures, stating “the remedy to solve the debt burden to pay taxes and become independent in developing the nation with our own money and even get to the point where instead of borrowing we will be lending to other nations. That is the trajectory we want to go”.

This is a fraud. The tax hikes are the pound of flesh demanded by the IMF, which backed the Finance Bill, stating that “the authorities have taken decisive steps towards fiscal consolidation”.

Ruto’s subservience to imperialism was on full display last month when he groveled to Washington to put Kenya at its service. US President Joe Biden named Kenya a major non-NATO ally, the first in sub-Saharan Africa, which will allow Nairobi to buy US military technologies and weapons in exchange for offering Kenyan soldiers as foot soldiers of US imperialism. Kenya is already sending US-trained anti-terror police to Haiti, funded to the tune of $300 million by Washington, tasked with terrorising the population and preventing refugee outflows to the US and Canada.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken meets with Kenyan President William Ruto, on the margins of the 77th Session of the United Nations General Assembly High Level Week, in New York City on September 21, 2022. [Photo: Ron Przysucha]

The protests over the past days seem to have been largely spontaneous, organised through social media. No major party has backed them. This reflects widespread public hostility to all the major parties.

Figureheads include anti-corruption activist Boniface Mwangi, who has promoted the bankrupt perspective of petitioning MPs and boosting opposition leader of Azimio la Umoja One Kenya Coalition, the millionaire Raila Odinga.

Defending him for not attending the demonstrations, Mwangi said, “Raila is also old. He has done this for over 40 years. We should be ashamed of ourselves for demanding more from Raila. He has given his best. If the Opposition has let us down, it is because they have no leader.”

Last year, Odinga corralled mass opposition to Ruto, intermittently calling for protests as a way of defusing opposition to Finance Bill 2023. Odinga, articulating the interests of the 0.1 percent of the Kenyan population (8,300 people) which according to Oxfam own more wealth than the bottom 99.9 percent (more than 48 million people), was terrified by developing working-class struggles, particularly civil servants, and called them off.

“It is better when it is known people, like Sifuna and Raila [Odinga], leading these demonstrations. The day Kenyans take this matter upon themselves, there will be no one to call to the table” said Edwin Sifuna, Secretary General of Odinga’s party at the height of last year’s protests.

Ruto’s savage police repression left over 75 people killed and hundreds injured, mostly from live ammunition.

Now the opposition has distanced themselves from the protests, although Odinga and some senior members have made tweets in support.

Francis Atwoli, the secretary general of the Central Organization of Trade Unions (COTU), consisting of 36 trade unions representing more than 1.5 million workers, has openly backed the Finance Bill. He cynically said “people are being taxed everywhere and indeed if we pay tax and the money is used properly we will evade the issue of borrowing money. Borrowing money becomes very difficult for any country to grow”.

Atwoli has attacked those trade unions within his umbrella organisation for opposing the Finance Bill. These include Kenya National Union of Teachers, Kenya University Staff Union, University Academic Staff Union, Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentist Union, Kenya National Union of Nurses, Kenya Union of Clinical Officers and the Kenya Union of Journalists.

These unions, however, representing millions of workers, have refused to call strikes to stop the bill from passing. Over the past years, they have worked to isolate and wear down strikes and opposition, allowing Ruto and his predecessor Uhuru Kenyatta to slash wages and benefits.

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German government plans to introduce conscription: Cannon fodder for the great “land war”

Philipp Frisch

The past few weeks have been characterised by a breathtaking escalation of the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. Hardly a day has gone by without leading politicians urging tougher action against Russia. While the Ukrainian army has attacked targets in the Russian hinterland with NATO weapons and the military alliance discussed the deployment of ground troops, the German government is vigorously pressing ahead with its preparations for a major European “land war”—as the self-proclaimed “defence industry minister” Robert Habeck (Greens) calls it.

Bundeswehr advertising poster: “Ready for the new service in your homeland?”

The government is accelerating its plans for a new compulsory military service, which Defence Minister Boris Pistorius (Social Democrats, SPD) partially presented to the public last week. In the spring, Pistorius had already called for a return to compulsory military service based on the Scandinavian model in order to make Germany “fit for war.”

Last Wednesday, Pistorius then announced to the assembled press that at least 5,000 additional young men and women would be called up for “selective military service” every year from 2025. This was the maximum possible within the limits of current training capacities.

“I make no secret of it: I would like to train 20,000 conscripts every year,” said the minister. With the expansion of capacities, the number should then increase. “Three issues are central to this: personnel, material and finances. In an emergency, we need young men and women to defend this country.”

The main purpose of Pistorius’ immediate plans lies less in an immediate mobilisation than in creating the structures—registration of persons, corresponding laws, etc.—to eventually be able to call up hundreds of thousands of soldiers and reservists as cannon fodder.

According to Pistorius, the first step should be to reintroduce conscription. Since this currently exists, “Neither for those who turn 18 and would have to be drafted if we were to get into a defence situation, nor for those who have already served and are now living their lives as 40- or 45-year-old fathers,” this was an “untenable situation,” the minister said.

The current conscription plans centre on sending a questionnaire to all 18-year-old men and women, in which they are asked to provide information about their physical condition and interest in military service. The approximately 400,000 men affected each year are obliged to complete the questionnaire. If they fail to do so, they face a fine.

The selection on the basis of the questionnaire means 40,000 to 50,000 young people will then be required to take part in the draft. At the end, “We will have a precise idea of which young men and women are particularly suitable and motivated to serve our country,” explained Pistorius.

Contrary to what numerous press reports suggest—such as Der Spiegel, under the headline “Just a bit of duty”—the government’s plan is by no means based solely on the “willingness to volunteer” of young people. Not least because of the massive recruitment problems of recent decades, the government and the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) know that the aversion to the military among young people is still overwhelming.

If 5,000 volunteers were not recruited, Pistorius expressly stated it would be necessary to compulsorily enlist them. Conscription itself should be reinstated and a corresponding draft law prepared by the autumn, he said.

In addition, the number of reservists who are called up in the event of war should be more than tripled—from 60,000 to 200,000. To this end, conscripts should be called up to the reserve after their active service and train annually with active troops and other reservists.

In addition, he would like to see general compulsory service. The model now being presented was “a starting point,” said the minister, adding, “This does not rule out anything for the future.”

The scale of conscription that Pistorius and his ministry have in mind is revealed in a confidential internal paper quoted by Der Spiegel on June 7. According to this, the Bundeswehr would need around 465,000 soldiers in a “real case of defence”—meaning a war against Russia. According to the same internal paper, a further 75,000 German soldiers are required just to fulfil the defence plans already agreed by NATO.

“Overall defence framework guidelines” (RRGV)

The mobilisation of hundreds of thousands of young people in Germany for a war against Russia would require a dictatorship. The government may be able to muster 5,000 volunteers a year, but not 500,000 without draconian coercive measures.

The enormity of the government’s plans for the militarisation of the country can be seen from the “Framework Guidelines for Overall Defence” (RRGV), which were approved by the cabinet just one week before the new military service plans were announced and represent a kind of abridged version of the secret 1,000-page “Operation Plan Germany.”

This transfers the requirements of the defence policy guidelines adopted last November to society as a whole. As the WSWS commented in November, these guidelines “can only be described as a blueprint for total war.”

The RRGV now show that this assessment was by no means exaggerated. In the event of war, the whole of society is to be organised according to military requirements. Moreover, the government is obviously prepared to accept massive numbers of casualties.

For example, the guidelines only provide for “basic protection against the effects of weapons of war,” which results from the “solid building fabric available everywhere”—i.e., simple, often dilapidated residential buildings. Otherwise, underground car parks and underground stations would serve as improvised bunkers. The majority of the population would therefore be practically defenceless against massive air or artillery attacks—not to mention nuclear weapons—especially as the “usual attack scenarios” are based on “extremely short warning times.”

The extent of war devastation that the government expects from 2029 onwards also becomes clear. “Due to the possibility of damage occurring simultaneously in a large number of locations,” the paper states, people cannot expect the state to help them. As in the last two world wars, which devastated an entire generation, they must therefore be prepared to “help themselves first ... and also provide neighbourly help.”

In addition, the guidelines contain massive cuts to basic rights, such as “bans on leaving and entering.”

According to a report in Der Spiegel, the much more comprehensive “Operation Plan Germany” also deals with questions such as “whether there are enough train drivers and strikebreakers on the railway” to ensure the transport of war equipment and cannon fodder to the front. “Must an addendum be added in small print to the train drivers’ collective labour agreements: ‘In the event of war, you will drive our trains’?”

These last points in particular show that the government’s war plans are taking on the character of a conspiracy against the majority of the population. Whether at home or in the direct combat zone, they will be on the front line and are expected to sacrifice their lives and rights for the government’s great power plans and the corporate interests it represents. At the same time, those in power take great care to ensure that these facts only reach the public in fragments or not at all.

These plans are flanked by non-stop war propaganda. Four days before the European elections, in which the government parties were downright decimated, Defence Minister Boris Pistorius demanded in the Bundestag (parliament): “We must be ready for war by 2029”—thus substantiating his already well-known demand.

Last Wednesday, the minister continued, “According to all international military experts, we must assume that Russia will be in a position ... to attack a NATO state or a neighbouring state from 2029.”

Once again, the war in Ukraine serves as justification for imperialist war plans that have been in the pipeline for at least 10 years. On June 5, the minister declared in the Bundestag: “We must not believe that Putin will stop at Ukraine’s borders.” Russia was also a threat to Georgia, Moldova and NATO as a whole, he said, but did not provide any proof of this.

Argentina’s Milei government brutally represses protests against draconian anti-worker bill

Rafael Azul

On June 12, tens of thousands of striking workers and students marched in the center of Buenos Aires and rallied in Congress Square to protest a legislative package of historic attacks against the working class that was ultimately approved by the Senate near midnight.

Anti-government protesters clash with police outside Congress, as lawmakers debate key state overhaul and tax bills proposed by President Javier Miliei, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, June 12, 2024. [AP Photo/Gustavo Garello]

As they approached Congress Square, protesters chanted, “Kick them all out! Let no one stay!” in reference to the fascistic Javier Milei administration and the legislature. This chant was made famous during the 2001 workers uprising that forced the resignation of then President Fernando De La Rúa and four other appointed successors in the space of a few weeks.

Justice Minister Patricia Bullrich sent federal police contingents to repress the protests, claiming that the demonstrators were a “modern coup-d’état” attempt against the Milei government. Federal Police blocked the marchers and attacked them with pepper spray, water cannons and rubber bullets. Scores of marchers were arrested in Buenos Aires. Many were wounded and needed to be hospitalized, including five members of the House of Deputies who had joined the protest.

Bullrich claimed that the protesters attacked the police with rocks and Molotov cocktails. She accused the protesters of setting fire to a TV news vehicle and another car. She called for sedition charges against those arrested. She openly accused the followers of the Peronists, the trade unions and the pseudo-left parties of being “provocateurs of violence who speak of overthrowing the government because they do not like what this government does.”

Leaders of the protest blamed police agent provocateurs for scattered incidents. Opposition Deputy Cecilia Moreau (Union for the Fatherland Coalition) described this as one of the worse acts of repression in 40 years. 

As the news of the repression spread, protests broke out in Buenos Aires’ working class neighborhoods, with people banging pots and pans and denouncing the government. 

Milei congratulated Bullrich for her militaristic response, stating: “The President’s Office congratulates the Security Forces for their excellent performance repressing the terrorist groups, which attempted a coup with sticks, stones and even grenades.”

That evening, during a forum with the Cato Institute before traveling to the G7 Summit in Italy that evening, Milei preemptively blamed the protesters for potential deaths from the repression. 

“Don’t discard that they will use the tactic of throwing dead people in the street, looting—something the journalists promote in their spaces,” he said.

This is the same propaganda employed by the US-backed fascist dictatorship of 1976-1983, which massacred tens of thousands of left-wing workers, youth and intellectuals while slandering them as “terrorists.”  

Inside the legislative headquarters, the Senate was discussing the so-called “Law of Bases” or “omnibus bill,” which contains more than 200 counter-reforms including austerity measures, pro-market measures, privatizations and attacks against workers’ labor and democratic rights. After extensive debate, the Law of Bases squeaked through the Senate with few changes, and thanks only to the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Victoria Villaruel. 

Villaruel, an open supporter of the military-fascist dictatorship, cynically declared that she was casting her yes vote on behalf of those who are “suffering” and leaving the country.

Milei’s party Libertad Avanza holds seven out of the 72 seats in the Senate; therefore it needed the votes of other parties, including Peronist legislators, along with the support from the trade union apparatus to suppress opposition. 

The General Labor Federation (CGT), and the Argentine Labor Federation (CTA) refused to call for industrial actions on June 12 or to mobilize their members for the demonstrations. After workers voted for an indefinite, national strike against the bill, the cooking oil workers unions shut down their strike in response to a court order. The union apparatus is limiting its role to negotiating with Milei.

Among the most controversial measures in the bill is a system of subsidies to big business called “Rules to Incentivize Large Investments” (RIGI), which includes a 10 percent reduction in corporate taxes for very large corporations. RIGI applies to investments of over 200 million US dollars, particularly in agriculture, forestry, mining, fossil fuels, energy and technology. It exempts big business from paying tariffs to import machinery and capital goods and from taxes on export revenues. The Law of Bases also paves the way for the privatization of numerous government-owned firms.

The measures that the Senate removed included the re-imposition of income taxes, and the elimination of government subsidies to the very poor [a measure that the House of Deputies had added to the original proposal]. The bill now goes back to the lower house for a final vote on the amendments.

The June 12 vote met with the approval International Monetary Fund, which signed off on its most recent loan disbursement to the Milei administration and possibly helped to negotiate with China the renewal of a recently cancelled debt swap agreement, negotiated under the previous administration, that will make available $6.5 billion in stand-by credit to the South American nation.

Wall Street gave a thumbs up to the passage of the Law of Bases. Initially, relevant stock and bond prices went up. Bloomberg quoted from a Bank of America statement that pointed to the passage of this legislation as proof that “dialogue” is possible between Milei and his political opposition in the legislature.

Not only does the ruling class and US imperialism see the passage of this anti-working class legislation and RIGI as positive; they are also encouraged by the Milei administration’s fascistic attacks on protesting workers, coupled with the repression of left-wing groups. 

During his six months on the job, the Milei administration has kept food supplies away from food banks, which are essential to poverty-stricken families, devalued the currency leading to dramatic inflation, sacked thousands of workers, repeatedly repressed protests by government employees, teachers, healthcare workers and students, raided the homes and headquarters of left-wing groups while establishing links with fascistic politicians around the world, including US former President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni.